


a side effect of dying

by GrimRevolution



Series: the most haunted house in new york [2]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sanctum Sanctorum (Marvel), Sentient Magical Relics, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, honestly that house has been dirty for so long and the resident wizard is tired of it, no inter-dimensional creatures were harmed in the writing of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 14:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14935688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrimRevolution/pseuds/GrimRevolution
Summary: We never truly lose who we are. We might stumble, but the very core of our being never really changes.And Stephen Strange has always been a Doctor.





	a side effect of dying

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”

_Martin Luther King Jr._

* * *

 

_You’ve come to **die** —_

Stephen jerked out of his bed, sweat sticking his hair to his skin as he scrambled on legs that barely managed to hold his own weight to the bathroom. Not bothering to turn on the light, he wrenched up the toilet seat and vomited with great lurching gasps. Nails scratched against the porcelain surface and his hands were shaking so hard that they couldn’t grip the edge.

The Cloak of Levitation was around his shoulders before he could careen forward, holding the Master of New York up while his stomach emptied itself. The smell—sudden and piercing in its bitterness—made Stephen gag again, dry heaving over the toilet. Sweaty palms and twitching fingers reached out to grab the handle and flush the mess down. Saliva had flooded where there had been bile and the sorcerer didn’t have the strength to swallow or spit it out, so it dripped over his lip into the bowl.

Red fabric tightened around his shoulders, and Stephen realized he was shaking. Around him, the world was still caught somewhere between half awake and asleep. Silver light peeked underneath the curtains, the sun was still a long way away from crawling over the horizon.

“’M okay,” Stephen murmured, patting the Cloak. He leaned away from the toilet and wiped his mouth with his arm. He wanted to say more, he _tried_ , but the words caught in his throat and he just leaned against the wall, legs pulled up to his chest. The sweat had turned cold as the muscles in his hands clenching involuntarily while his skin—clammy and stretched too much over the rest of his body—felt like it would tear at any moment.

Stephen’ eyes stayed open as hours ticked past, refusing to close them in case an ever moving face waited behind his eyelids. He clutched the Cloak close and shivered.

oOo

Spring cleaning.

Spring. _Cleaning_.

Stephen stood in the foyer of the Sanctum Sanctorum with both the front and back doors open. The cloak of Levitation hovered, brushing against his shoulder as if reassuring itself that the Master of New York was still there. Not paying attention to the fabric continuously rubbing his arm, Stephen was trying to figure out how to best open the windows across from the chandelier when Wong came out of the portal to Kamar-Taj.

The librarian rounded the wall, and crossed his arms over his chest.

“What are you doing?”

Looking down at the feather duster in one hand, rag in the other, Stephen frowned then turned his gaze back to the librarian. “Is it not obvious?” Next to him, the Cloak straightened like a spine against a cattle prod.

“Alright Stephen,” Wong said, his voice taking the tone a parent might have with a six year old, “ _why_ are you holding a feather duster?”

“Because the Sanctum is _mine_ ,” Stephen waved the duster above his head like it was a sword, words growing rushed and hard, “and I refuse to live in this mess any _longer_.” His apartment had been devoid of clutter, of mess, and then he lived in a temple and hotel rooms and various other places so _damn it_ he was going to clean no matter how Wong judged him. Stephen glared at the librarian, daring him to say anything to argue against the idea.

Lifting his hands in surrender, Wong took the moment to truly _look_ over Stephen.

The Master of New York was clad in paint stained sweatpants and a giant t-shirt that hung off his shoulders. He was also barefoot, hair a mess, and had bags that could check themselves onto a plane under his eyes.

Red fabric stood by and the Cloak’s pointed collar shifted, relaxing and stiffening like a dog’s ears.

“Did you sleep at _all_ , Stephen?” Wong looked as if he regretted the words as they left his mouth, managing to hide his wince as the other man bristled like a coyote.

“ _Why_?” The feather duster was shaking in Stephen’s hand, his fingers tightening. Muscles spasmed. Scar tissue rippled.

Wong blinked and his smooth, expressionless poker face was back in place. “I have a project for you,” he said.

“I’m busy.”

“It’ll—”

“I’m _busy_.”

A sorcerer vs. sorcerer glaring contest began between Wong—impassive and unblinking—and Stephen—bared teeth and drawn shoulders.  Silence settled in the foyer, even though the Master of New York looked shaky on his own two feet.

Wong looked over the other man and sighed internally.

It was more than just ‘ _stop that, Stephen_ ’ or ‘ _I’m on your side, Stephen_ ’ or even ‘ _don’t be a fucking **dick** , Stephen_’.

It was two years of pain, of frustration, of waking up during the hot nights with a pained gasp as nails and shards of glass crunched in frozen lungs.

It was dying over and over and over and _over_ again.

It was quiet, resigned sobs in the dark.

Stephen’s eyes were bright and blue and reminded Wong of the bioluminescent tips of a vampire squid.

“Fine,” Wong said and pulled a roll of parchment from his robe. He placed it on one of the side tables, next to a vase that looked like it could use a good dusting. “When you’re not ‘ _busy_ ’ you can take a look.”

Turning on his heel, Wong walked back around the wall and through the portal. He waited and watched, able to see the roll through the shimmering, glass-like surface.

One second passed, two, three, until five seconds became half a minute.

A trembling hand reached out and picked up the parchment.

oOo

Stephen sat on the marble at the bottom of the stairs, feather duster and rag placed to the side, the Cloak on his shoulders, unrolled parchment in hand. He stared at Wong’s angled scrawl, frowned at the written words, and turned to look around at the Sanctum’s foyer.

“ _Fine_ ,” he said to no one, and the parchment burned. Its ashes were blown away into nothingness and Stephen left the feather duster on the floor to go to the study. He grabbed a pile of papers and dragged them back down to the bottom of the stairs. Murmuring quiet spells, twisting his fingers into aching shapes, the sorcerer watched his pen stand to attention.

“You’re going to draw for me,” he told it with a grumbling hostility that washed over the unfeeling pen like water over a stone. It didn’t move, just was there, waiting.

 _Make a map of the Sanctum_ , Wong had written on the parchment.

Stephen gritted his teeth and then, with deliberate slowness, unclenched his jaw. Picking the duster off the floor, he motioned around him. “Draw the floor plan of the foyer,” he told the pen. “Include the furniture and relics.”

Pen and paper swooped off the do as he asked and Stephen took his duster to the vases by the front door.

oOo

Swipe, spray, wipe. Swipe, spray, wipe.

The movements became a rhythm which became a habit which became a song that his muscles followed without thinking.

Stephen cleaned up the windowsills, he dusted the vases, he swept the floor.

By the second hour, the roaring, hurricane emotions in his chest had settled to gurgling streams. The dam held, for now, but one crack would start it all over again.

Swipe, spray, wipe.

oOo

The kitchen—with its massive glass doors and amber lights that hung from the ceiling—was probably the most well lit place in the entire sanctum. Stephen wiped up the dust that had gathered around the top of the cabinets, on the fridge, and between the corners of the oven. He scrubbed down older stains on the stove and counter tops, loaded all the dishes into the dishwasher, and swept the dirt that had managed to escape some of the potted plants back outside.

Holding a bottle of cleaner in one hand and a dish rag with the other, Stephen stood in front of his fridge.

“You know this is going to happen, right?” he told it.

The fridge rumbled.

“You have absolutely no choice in the matter.”

At the moment, the Cloak was hiding behind Stephen while the pen and parchment took shelter under the table.

With a scowl, the Master of New York motioned impatiently. “Open up,” he ordered.

The fridge rocked from one side to the other and refused.

“You _pain_ in the—I will _make_ you if you don’t open the door willingly.” Stephen’s eyes flashed and the stench of ozone settled low in the kitchen. “And I’ll buy a new fridge,” he straightened to his full height and looked down his nose at the kitchenware.

Metal and air stopped and silence settled in the Sanctum as the townhouse held its breath.

With a groaning creaking of hinges, the fridge slowly opened the door.

“There,” Stephen said, patting the topmost door rack. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

It took a bit to remove all the food, but then Stephen was scrubbing away years worth of stains and messes. The whole thing had the faint bitter stench of coffee—which he didn’t quite understand—and he spent a couple minutes scrubbing with a dish sponge at a reddish brown stain that probably came from some meat.

Through it all, the fridge was—thankfully—complacent. Even rumbling like some weird mechanical cat when some of the older looking messes were removed. With nothing to be done for the age spots, Stephen leaned back and admired the clean fridge.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He patted the fridge and stood to place the food back inside. Longer lasting food was placed in the back—sauces in jars, yogurt, juices—with leftovers and fruit at the front. One of the drawers was used for the meats, another for breads and cheese.

When he finally closed the fridge the machine looked... pleased.

If a fridge could even look pleased.

oOo

Two hallways branched out from the foyer. One—on the left—led to an old mudroom that had been left to collect dust over the years and the other circled what Stephen hoped to be the first floor but could probably also just had gone into a separate dimension from the length and width. There were doors—tall doors, short doors, wooden doors, metal doors, doors bound with silver chains, and one that looked like they had been left out in a swamp and were now rotting away.

Stephen’s pen turned, slowly, to face him. As if it had eyes and enough of a brain to do such a thing.

“Well,” the sorcerer said. “Just go far enough so you can still see me.”

Because the hallway went on for a very, very long time.

While the pen got to work, Stephen took a deep breath and opened the closest door.

A bathroom.

He could deal with a bathroom.

oOo

Doctor Stephen Strange could not, in fact, deal with the bathroom.

A fungus was growing in the shower. A fungus that had bulbous, yellow eyes, a couple dozen mouths, and crab claws. It pulsed and hissed and bubbled on the wall.

“You have until the count of _five_ ,” he said, some of that cold rage that had settled in his stomach the night before while he was turning on his bed, sleep evading his weak grasp rising up like the tide.

The fungi hissed and spat at him.

“Five.” Stephen’s fingers already started moving. Intricate shapes that burned and made the air heat up in the small bathroom. The Cloak of Levitation wrapped tighter around him and his pen peeked around the doorframe to watch.

“ _Four_.”

The fungus grew over the showerhead dripping something thick, oily, and black.

Stephen never had the patience to deal with anything that could be done right away. So he said ‘ _Zero_ ’ and thrust his hand out. Fire spewed from between his fingers, licking over the porcelain and up the tiles. The fungus screeched as it bubbled like an egg in a frying pan, oily flesh solidifying until it could burn.

Gagging from the smell of avocado-left-in-the-sun-over-a-week-long-vacation with essence of dead fish and rotting pineapples, Stephen backed up out of the bathroom. Rather, he was yanked by his cloak, but that didn’t stop him from watching with morbid astonishment as the yellow eyes popped and spread goo across the walls that quickly blackened.

Eventually, the screeching died along with the magical fire, and all that was left were the shining tiles and an urge to never use that particular bathroom.

 _Ever_.

oOo

The hallway didn’t go on forever. In fact, it went on for about ten or so doors before repeating itself. One door led to a bedroom. The others just led to... places.

One was the supply closet in some retail store.

One was to somewhere in far off space where a herd of asteroids spun lazily around each other.

One was under the ocean, someplace close to a reef where the sun made great long shadows dance across the colourful spines of fish..

Other dimensions, Stephen guessed, or places on his Earth like the portal to Kamar-Taj in the foyer. He stared at the wall of water for a long minute, watched the fish drift lazily by, and pushed his hand through the surface. It gave way like water—not that he was expecting resistance, but Stephen hadn’t expected that it would be like a swimming pool only in the wall instead of the ground.

It was cold, that ocean, and he pressed his other hand in, sighing as the aches in his hands—the constant, ever-there aches that he had learned to ignore through constant pain—soothed from the temperature. A sea turtle drifted lazily past, not paying attention to the two arms waving about.

After a while, Stephen pulled back. Saltwater rolled down his wrist and forearm, dripping from his elbow. He pressed his hands to his face and sighed.

“Good news,” he told the pen as it floated beside him, “you don’t have to map out those types of rooms.”

oOo

Wong came back after six hours to a foyer with polished floors, dust-free lights and clear windows. The vases and sofas had been wiped down, the rugs beaten clean, and the blankets folded. He found the kitchen in similar conditions—though he’d never seen the fridge hum that contently even when its last master lived there—and stumbled upon Strange in the living room.

A vacuum—silent, despite the fact that it was clearly working—moved back and forth across the rug underneath the leather sofa. It avoided the feather duster that had been left on the floor, the three piles of currently-being-organized books, and a pair of long legs.

Stephen was slumped against the back of the sofa, his head tipped forward, bangs hanging curled and loose against his forehead. The Cloak of Levitation was laid across him, collar gently pushing the sorcerer’s head up every so often so he didn’t fall over. Crossing his arms, Wong looked over the other man, taking in the purple bags under closed eyes, the almost translucent pallor of white skin, and the stillness in which he slept.

“Passed out, did he?” Wong directed the question to the Cloak.

It fluttered in response and wrapped closer around Stephen.

The vacuum settled in the corner and powered down like a roomba.

oOo

Stephen stumbled into the kitchen while the sun was going down, blinking groggily and existing out of sorts as he glanced around the table and cabinets. Behind him, the Cloak of Levitation bobbed along, looking like a hovering parent as it watched the sorcerer to make sure he wouldn’t collapse.

“Good morning, Stephen,” Wong said cheerfully, pitting dark cherries over a bowl. Two thirds were already done and the rest were waiting to stain his fingers red.

Rubbing his neck with a grimace, Stephen looked out the glass doors and frowned at the blues, purples, and pinks that lit up the courtyard. “How long did I sleep for?”

“Seven to eight hours,” taking the seed-filled bowl, Wong used the movement to look over the other man with a critical eye as he dumped the contents into the trash.

Stephen yawned, covering his mouth just in time, and looked surprised at the action. He blinked a few time and shook himself, the tiredness falling away with only long years of practice in an ER. “Do you need any help?” He stepped around the counter, leaning over the rice cooker and reaching for the lid of the crock pot.

Wong waved the other man’s hand away and shoved a second bowl of cherries at him. “Pit,” he ordered.

“What are you making?”

“ _Pit_ , Stephen.”

He knew the other man was rolling his eyes without looking, but Wong smiled to himself as Stephen got to work. They stood, side by side, in the quiet. Seeds dropped into bowls, juice squirted over fingers, and the peace was ruined by a single, growling stomach.

“Did you have breakfast this morning?”

Blue eyes stayed stubbornly focused on trembling fingers and red fruit.

“ _Stephen_.”

“No,” the other man grumbled, “I was... otherwise distracted.”

 _Tired,_ Wong heard beneath the other man’s words. _Frustrated, angry._

“Dinner is almost done,” Wong said, swallowing what he wanted to say. “Go get the plates.”

Blinking, Stephen looked at the librarian and then turned to the fruit. “But the—”

In one quick motion, the cherries pitted themselves and Wong pointed to the cabinet. “Plates,” he said.

“Whatever happened to ‘enjoying the action’?” Stephen rolled his eyes, fishing around for what they needed and coming up with the dishware, a couple of glasses, and a handful of silverware.

“Don’t get smart with me,” Wong gently nudged the other man out of the way with his shoulder and took the bowls of cherries to the fridge. “And get the rice.”

It took very little time to put rice on plates and cover it with the honey garlic chicken—sprinkled with sesame seeds Wong had found in the pantry—and then they were eating under the softened lights in the kitchen. The sun had gone down, leaving the outside world dipped in darkness that only seemed consuming by the lights they were sitting under.

A fork caught on a plate and fell, hitting ceramic like a car falling over a cliff.

“I’m—” Stephen stopped, looking pained—though not in the way that his hands hurt or that what he was trying to say was agonizing, but pained in a way that came from regret. “I’m sorry for snapping at you this morning,” he managed, voice oddly quiet.

The sigh that left Wong was fond and exasperated and maybe just a bit pleased. “An apology,” he said, “progress.”

Looking down at his plate, Stephen seemed to get further away even though he hadn’t moved at all.

“Everyone is allowed to have bad days, Stephen,” Wong said. “Though, I don’t believe you’ll be able to clean the Sanctum every time it happens.”

A short surprised laugh escaped Stephen’s lips. “I didn’t get anywhere close to cleaning all of it,” he admitted. “Everywhere seems small until you have to dust every corner.”

“You polished the foyer,” Wong pointed out, not quite sure why but compared to the kitchen that had been swept and the living room that had been vacuumed it was... different.

Because it would have taken more time. It would have been _thorough_ in a way the others had not.

Stephen picked his fork back up, avoiding Wong’s eyes.

“I did,” he said.

And he said nothing more about it.

oOo

Master Daniel had died in the foyer, Wong remembered later, once he was back in Nepal and getting ready for the barrage of questions the students would have. And Stephen Strange had witness his death.

oOo

“You need a job, Stephen,” Wong said after he had stumbled upon the Master of New York running a clothes brush over the Cloak of Levitation. Red fabric was curled up in a warm lap, rising and falling like a cat’s back, not minding the terrible shaking in scarred hands.

Neither seemed to hear him for a moment, but Stephen looked up as his brush was guided to a corner. His smirk was knowing and teasing and just a little on the arrogant side.

 “The Ancient One already gave me one.”

Wong sighed. “Well,” he said, turning away to head back to Nepal. “Then find yourself a hobby.”

“I have one of those, too!” Stephen called after him.

oOo

Managing to get his way through two bedrooms, one bathroom, and the upstairs dining room, Stephen just about passed out where he stood until the Cloak guided him to his own quarters.

He couldn’t keep working himself to exhaustion but, as he dropped off into dreamless sleep, Stephen figured it was better than the alternative.

oOo

Picking up rust remover from the store, Stephen brought a white tub to the kitchen, pulled the various whetstones out of storage, and placed the neglected weapons out on the table. A falling-apart-book with a spine that was slowly coming undone and pages that slid out of their own accord was placed beside him on the counter—a catalogue of all the known relics in the Sanctum.

Flipping to the pages on weapons—only to find that it was categorized by the time the item came to the Sanctum—Stephen searched for the dagger that looked the worst on the table. Poor thing was covered in angry red rust and he had barely felt the magic when he picked it up.

“Silver Dagger,” tapping the calligraphy with his finger, Stephen glanced over at the weapon that was only recognized by the ornamental markings on its handle. “Not very creative, but what can you do?”

The dagger gave his hand a gentle zap. Like a bite from a ladybug.

“Hey,” Stephen held the small weapon up to eye-level. “If you don’t want to get clean that’s fine, but removing the rust will assist the magic in the metal to flow naturally.”

And now he was talking to a dagger.

Clearly, his life had gone uphill.

But the dagger seemed _willing_ somehow, no matter how quiet.

Stephen poured a generous amount of  rust remover along the blade and took a sponge to the dagger, scrubbing it over the tub and watched as the suds went from white to red to brown. The grey metal appeared gradually and the twisting ornamentation before the hilt caught awkwardly every time he swiped down. Paying attention to the little crevices, Stephen scrubbed the bits that almost tore the sponge so they were cleaned away with the rest of the rust.

He felt the magic of the dagger pulsing slowly, rising, tickling the skin in his fingers.

Grabbing a cup of water, Stephen poured it over the blade, cleaning away the rust remover. Looking over the black marks that still littered the grey in some places, the Master of New York took the small conditioning stone his Cloak had handed over (it was hovering close to his shoulder, watching with a curiosity that burned against Stephen’s shoulder blades) and placed the dagger on a small hand towel.

“Don’t worry,” he told the relics that had moved closer on the table to watch, “all of you will get a bath.”

oOo

“—so she took me to Build-A-Bear—which is this teddy bear making store normally found in these supermalls—anyway!” Stephen waved the toothbrush in his hand and the sword glowing red, orange, and yellow almost slid through the fireproof glove to pierce his thigh. He tightened his grip just in time and went back to polishing the gold. “So it’s past the attack on New York and everyone is just staying home and she decided that—on our _only_ day off, mind you—that we’re going to make some teddy bears.”

On the table and floating in the air, the relics seemed to be leaning in, listening to every word. The Cloak of Levitation was hovering, partially folded, looking like a child at story time.

He went back to gently scrubbing, polishing the soft metal with learned gentleness. “And no one was there except for this poor teenager who looked shocked to see us, but he takes us through the process and Christine picks out this tye-dye looking cat and I was going to go for a bear because, I mean, maybe I could shove it into a doctor’s outfit and give it away at the next charity auction, right?”

Stephen sighed and wiped at his brow with his forearm. The sword in his hand was made of fire magic and he could feel the sweat dripping over his brow. “But then I got distracted because there was a _hammerhead shark_.” He grinned broadly, remembering the bright blue and white velvet with massive black eyes. “I mean, who wouldn’t want a _shark_?”

There were mixed reactions. Some, like the sword in his hand, pulsed in agreement. Others, like the shadow dagger he had carefully polished, sent out soft little bursts of confusion.

“A shark is a large fish—some are even bigger than me—with large mouths filled with lots of teeth.” Stephen smiled in a crocodile way, so they could see his. “But not exactly like mine—they’re more like sharpened blades.”

A rustle of approval moved through the kitchen.

“Yeah, yeah—so I picked the hammerhead and you generally fill them with stuffing but Christine got this idea that we should put sounds in ours and that we should pick each other’s sounds _but_ we couldn’t listen to them until we reached the car. Which,” Stephen paused, “I mean, it did sound like a fun idea. That’s why I agreed to it. So she picked out mine and I picked out hers and we stuffed the animals.” He turned the sword gently to get at the wings of the phoenix carved out on the handle.

“Well, after that you choose the outfit and, I mean, I already chose a shark, right? I might as well just do whatever, so Christine got hers a cute little sailor outfit and I just—” Stephen shrugged sheepishly. “I dressed up that shark like Darth Vader.”

A secondary rumble of confusion.

Stephen frowned. “Right,” he said. “None of the masters would have taken you out of the cases—of course you’ve never seen Star Wars. Don’t worry. I’ll fix that. We’ll have a movie night.” Waving his hand, Stephen focused back on the sword humming in his hand. “Anyway, just know that my shark looked ridiculous. It was... a disaster, really. But I liked it, so I kept it, and then we were done and heading back to the car.” He rolled his eyes.

“Before I even start the stupid thing—the car,” Stephen clarified, already feeling the interest and the relics settled again, “—Christine says that she wants us to find out what sound the other picked. And then she tells me to go first.”

Stephen set down the toothbrush and grabbed the jeweller’s cloth off the counter. “I was expecting something like, I don’t know, a sappy message or something cute like a cat meow but _no_.” He rubbed over the gold, checking for scratches as he went. “No, instead I press the hand of the shark and it just made this horrible—”

Opening his mouth, Stephen mimicked the teeth grinding, back throated, on-screen screeching of a Jurassic Park Velociraptor.

“Just that.” He did the sound again. “That’s what she put in my shark.”

The Cloak shook in silent laughter.

“No,” Stephen pointed a finger at the red fabric. “It’s not funny.”

There was a rustle of amusement over the magic. _‘It’s a little funny’_ the relics seemed to say.

oOo

Reorganizing the pages in the Sanctum’s manifesto, Stephen glanced up to check that none of the relics had wandered off while the movie was playing. He had moved what he was working on to the coffee table in the foyer and sat on the floor with his back to one of the small, leather chairs.

Once he was sure that everyone was content, Stephen went back to slicing up parchment and folding it so three pages became six.  One group became three, then seven, then twenty, until a large stack sat on the table and he reached for the spindle of white thread and needle.

“Stephen?”

He made the punctures an inch and a half apart before looking up at Wong.

“What are you doing?”

Stephen nodded to what was left of the old book. “It was falling apart,” he said, “and the order was all wrong, so I’m making a new book and transferring the information over.”

Wong sat down across from him and reached for the crumbling pages and creaking binding. “I see,” he said and looked up. His attention was grabbed by movement to their left, and both sorcerers watched as swords and daggers jerked as if in shock. “And what is going on over there?”

“They’re watching Star Wars,” Stephen shrugged. “The website said something about a certain paste,” he tilted his head to the side and looked over Wong. “Do you have any?”

The librarian was still staring at the assorted relics.

“ _Wong_.”

“What?”

Stephen smirked. “Do you have any book glue?”

“I’m sure Kamar-Taj has some somewhere,” Wong said, finally pulling his attention away from what was going on in the Sanctum’s living room. “Is there a reason why thousand year old weapons are watching Star Wars in the living room?”

Opening his mouth, Stephen paused. ‘ _They don’t know who Darth Vader is’_ was the easiest response, but that would bring up questions about why they now knew about Darth Vader enough to want to watch a movie. Or why Stephen had been talking about Darth Vader in the first place. Or even any part of what had happened earlier in the kitchen.

“I thought it would be a learning experience.”

“Really,” Wong said, his gaze dark and unimpressed. “A learning experience.”

Stephen nodded and ignored the needle pricking his finger when his hand gave a jerking twitch. “Yes; that’s what I said.”

“I’m sure they are all very grateful,” Wong drawled.

“That’s the spirit!”

oOo

Heat hit New York the same time July did. It came on the back of rain and walls of fog before the sun filled every crevice during the day and left old buildings damp and muggy and with a feeling of stickiness that never quite went away. Stephen rolled over on his side for the twelfth time in ten minutes and stared at the wall of his room. He had closed the shades sometime around midnight, hoping that more darkness would help his body settle but the humidity stuck and he was left grinding his back molars.

His old apartment had been temperature controlled. The only time he had even needed to feel the weather was when he went from the building through the underground garage and from his parking spot at Metro-General to his office.

There were times Stephen missed that apartment. Missed the quietness of it and the way that everything had been set up exactly how he wanted with the study and its tall, filled bookcases to the glass case of fragile model ships he had to sell while trying to fix his hands.

The piano. The watches. The kitchen and it’s polished, sharpened culinary knives. Some of the things he couldn’t part with were still in storage—an old unit belonging to his parents that their money still paid for.

He’d have to get it all sometime. Once he could stomach returning to Nebraska.

Rolling onto his back, Stephen flexed his hands and felt the beginnings of swelling in his knuckles starting to form. He’d have to invest in a dehumidifier. Just for his own damn sake.

Not-quite-sweat clung to Stephen’s skin and he sighed as he sat up, disturbing the Cloak of Levitation that had curled up next to him like a cat.

“Sorry,” he murmured, brushing his hand along the fabric.

The Cloak curled around Stephen’s fingers, holding him there as if anchoring him to this reality. As his attention turned to the blank stretch of wall, thoughts blurring seamlessly together, the fabric gathered itself into the sorcerer’s lap.

They stayed like that for a while; sitting there and watching shadows play across the wall.

It would be a while before Stephen laid back down, the Cloak still holding onto his shaking hand.

oOo

“Could be worse,” Stephen told the deck of tarot cards he was carefully wiping down. Dirty fingers had handled them in the past, leaving a sticky residue that clung to thick paper and the hand painted images. “It will take a while, but you’ll be just fine.”

The deck was old. Older, perhaps, than some of the swords he had cleaned up and sharpened the day before. Flipping through the manifesto, he found that it was supposed to be the original tarot deck.

Which excused the heavy magic that had crackled against his palm when he had picked it up.

‘ _The cards change their appearance according to the person using them_ ,’ the page had said, explaining why the white and faded images had been stained black within minutes. Medieval symbolism had been replaced with modern artwork—there was a man painted in white on one, blinded by two doves holding a bit of cloth in front of his eyes. He wore a golden cape that matched the Greek wreath that floated just above his brow. In one hand, he held a chain. In the other, a sceptre topped with an atom.

Behind the man, out of the Black, rose a throne of feather and beneath his feet was a constellation of stars and a single, golden word.

 _Chariot_.

Stephen brushed his thumb over the blocked face of the man and sighed softly before placing the card with the others.

oOo

“You can’t come with me,” Stephen told the Cloak who, at the moment, was tugging and hovering like a dog being left home on its own for the first time. “I’m just—hey, _hey_ —I’m just going to the grocery store. It’s perfectly safe.”

The Cloak wrapped itself around his shoulders and tugged Stephen away from the front door. “Hey!” The force was enough to knock the Master of New York off his feet and he was caught by red fabric that seemed to whither under his sharp glance.

“What’s gotten into you?” Stephen murmured, straightening his t-shirt and turning his attention to the Cloak.

It waved around a bit, whipping back and forth and flaring out like the head of a cobra.

He was pretty sure it was trying to mime something out, but Stephen could only shake his head. “I’m sorry,” he told the Cloak. “But you stand out too much and I’m trying _not_ to be noticed.”

Fabric snapped as it straightened and the high collar curled and flattened, growing and shrinking before the Cloak _changed._ It was a subtle stretching and sewing, of becoming short where it was once long and long where it was short and then—

It was a red button up shirt with black embroidered wings on the back and gold buttons.

“Huh,” Stephen said, reaching for the Cloak-That-Was-No-Longer-A-Cloak and let the fabric fall into his hand. “Well, that’s one way to do it” he admitted with a small smile, shrugging the button up on. The collar of the shirt patted his cheek, pleased with itself.

oOo

The first time he’s stepped out of the Sanctum in at least a week and a half, and Stephen couldn’t help but walk around. He stopped by the deli, picked up a sandwich, and ate it while sitting in the park. Above him, the sun was bright and warm—but not too hot—and the sky was clear with people walking their dogs or with their families and friends.

A group of students sat on the grass, talking about everything and nothing.

Stephen leaned back and let his sunglasses drop low on his nose.

He’d get to the groceries.

Eventually.

A man sat down on the other side of the bench and Stephen opened one eye under dark lenses to sneak a glance. The guy—black, with a beard and goatee—wore a dark leather jacket with a hood (despite it being summer) and a pair of aviator sunglasses. He had a scar along his left brow that went down underneath the frames hiding his eyes.

Stephen closed his eye and crossed one leg over the other, pausing when he felt something move against his leg. It was rectangular and deep in his pocket, but he dug it out and sighed at the sight of the tarot cards. The Cloak tapped his neck with the very corner of its collar—a movement that could have been mistaken by a breeze.

“Stephen Strange,” the man next to him spoke up.

Fingers tightening around the cards, Stephen looked over the long lines of scars up his hands, watched the way they trembled. “Looks like you finally dropped the ‘Mister part.” He said, absently shuffling the cards. “Let me guess; sign the Accords or we’ll arrest you. Blah, blah, blah.” The light caught on the black backs, making star charts light up in silver before they vanished again.

“Nothing like that,” the man next to him said, a wiry smirk on his face. He hadn’t turned to look away from the people in the park. “Do you tell fortunes, Strange?”

Magic arched up the sorcerer’s arm in response to the question, the tarot cards almost vibrating in his hold. “Sounds like something you should go to that place on 14th street for,” Stephen murmured.

“How about a trade, then,” the man on the bench said. “You give me a reading and I’ll offer you a job.”

“Already have one,” Stephen countered, shuffling the deck.

Inclining his head, the man tapped his fingers against the wood between them. “One that pays and has benefits.”

“No.” Stephen moved to stand up.

“The Accords have nothing to do with it.”

He paused and sat, slowly, back down. “And what sort of group do you have,” Stephen chose his words carefully, “that works outside of the Sokovia Accords?”

The man smirked and nodded to the tarot cards. “Why don’t we find out?”

Stephen hummed and continued to shuffle the cards until they told him they were finished and held them out to his bench partner. “Tap them,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Stephen watched as the man shifted and touched the top of the deck with a fingerless gloved hand. The cards were pulled back, shuffled one more time, and placed on the sorcerer’s thigh. For a moment, Stephen traced the circles and lines drawn onto the back and tapped out a rhythm over the stars.

With a final breath, he drew the first card.

Sometimes, objects with magic were quiet things whose power had been forgotten or changed or simply just ignored. The Eye of Agamotto—an infinity stone trapped in the engineering of the Vishanti—could control time. But time was relative. Time was a product of gravity and space. The closer to the gravitational core of a planet, the faster time passed.

The tarot cards had no limitations to Time and Space. They were merely watchers and told the truth of what they saw.

 _Always_.

Stephen had pulled the Ten of Swords.

A spotlight shone down on nine swords balanced upon their hilts, looking as if they would topple at any moment. Their tips pointed up towards the sky while six grey and lifeless birds were speared upon them. Another sword, tip down into the ground, stood in the middle. A white bird was on its hilt, unbothered by the death on all sides as a gleaming, orange sun rose at its back.

Magic breathed into him, and Stephen watched the birds flutter and move, turning into men and woman in black uniforms, a black eagle on their shoulders. He saw the eagle turn into a skull with long, curled tentacles, watched as they open fired on people in a room with computers and screens.

Stephen blinked and the white bird became the man beside him, shot in an apartment building and whisked away to a hospital and then to another and another until he was beneath a dam. Alive, even when the world called him dead.

“Nick Fury,” Stephen said, looking over the man across from him, “Former Director of Shield.” He turned the card so the man could see the Ten of Swords. “You would risk revealing yourself just to talk to me?”

“Didn’t you hear?” Fury said, smirking. “I’m dead.”

Stephen hummed and placed the card gently on the open bench between them. He reached for the deck.

“All that from a little painting?” Fury looked down at the image.

“Tarot cards tell stories,” Stephen said. “They tell the truth about our past, our present, and our future. Some people can only read the symbols and guess at what they are saying.” He held the second card between his index finger and thumb, tilting it back and forth to admire the way the light moved across the back. “Mine have been saturated with enough magic they can give me glimpses through time.”

Nick Fury sat back against the bench, his eyebrows raising just slightly.

Stephen couldn’t tell if it was the open admittance of magic that caused the reaction, or just the thought of a man who thought he could see through time. It didn’t matter, anyway. He’d drawn the Four of Swords; four black bone handles hung in the air, obsidian that had been pounded down and sharpened tied to them by leather strips. They existed, neither flying nor falling, above a pond of three gold lotuses and a lily pad.

 “What are you preparing for, Director?” Stephen frowned and leaned forward, the daggers turning into people. They met with Nick Fury over coffee, in parks, in restaurants. “What are you afraid of?” One of the images turned into himself, staring down at the card in his hand.

“The Accords make it difficult to have heroes that can work behind the scenes,” Fury said. “And there are always threats.”

Stephen placed the card down by the first. _More than you know_ , he wanted to say, but stopped himself by reaching to draw the last of the set.

The one that would tell him the future.

On his leg, the deck snapped with magic and settled, once more, to stillness. Stephen hesitated, his fingers trembling just above the cards.

“What is it?” Fury’s attention was heavy on the sorcerer’s shoulders.

“I’m not sure,” Stephen murmured. He drew the card.

The Moon. It had a woman sitting above a body of black water underneath the upside down crescent of bright white light. She was pulling her hair back over her ear, one leg crossed over the other, and was reaching down to a small bowl by her calf. A waterfall corrupted the shape of the light; smearing the edges together with tiny dotted stars before wiping away the white and leaving nothing but black. Above the flowing water was a hand, two fingers pointed at the card holder, unnoticed by the woman beneath it.

Ominous. Foreboding.

Stephen frowned and looked again.

The woman’s hand, the one pointing into the bowl—it was reflected above her.

Magic hummed, pleased.

“Well?” Nick urged.

“I—” Stephen was dragged into the swirling magic, swallowed down into dust and mourning. Death hung low in the air, settling over a group of people in the brush of a jungle before he was whisked away to a planet with an amber sky and a graveyard of cities.

Dust and death.

And a single snap of fingers.

Stephen was jerked from the vision by the card falling from his fingers, Fury leaning closer, his mouth moving but sound reached the Sorcerer’s ears slowly, as though it was coming through an ocean. “I’m alright,” he said, his voice choked as if the words themselves were afraid to pierce the air. “I’m—” he reached for the Moon and paused just over the image.

Dust and Death.

“Your preparing is all for naught, Director Fury,” Stephen told the other man, his voice quiet and almost swallowed by the warmth of the day and the laughter of the people in the park. “Destiny is coming. You will have to think by different rules, to view it all in a different light.”

Fury frowned. “Change is never good.”

“Change is neither good nor bad,” Stephen said, staring at the painted woman. “It is merely change.”

“I am an old man, Strange,” Fury leaned back against the bench. “And change is always scary.”

Stephen hummed in neither agreement nor disagreement. There would have been a time where he would have agreed. But that time had passed. “I don’t think I would have been able to help you anyway,” he told Fury.

“Help?”

“With your little project.”

Fury’s eyebrows rose again. “Oh?” he said.

“Unfortunately,” Stephen reached over to pick up the cards, shuffling them gently back into the deck, “that’s just not who I am.”

“And who, exactly—” Nick Fury tilted his head forward, letting his sunglasses drop low on his nose. One dark eye stared at the sorcerer—the other was blank and scarred and pale. “— _Are_ you?”

Standing up, the Master of New York slid his tarot cards into his pocket. “My name is Stephen Strange,” he said. “I live at 177A Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.”

Out in the world, people watched the darkness open up with the things that normally lived in the shadows. They glimpsed at the world that lived beneath their footsteps, behind them, in the corners of their eyes.

They saw, and they didn’t understand.

 “And I’m a Doctor.”

oOo

Stephen pushed the door to the Sanctum open with his shoulder, bags of food in his arms. “Yes, yes,” he said to the insistent tugging of the Cloak that had been Not-A-Cloak for long enough. “Let me just—” placing the bags down on the counter, the Sorcerer finally let the fabric slip off him and watched as it shook like a dog.

The Cloak was back as its long, flowing self within moments, and it hovered at his shoulder, watching as he placed food in the fridge, the pantry, and the freezer. It patted at his pocket until—struggling with a bunch of bananas and a bag of flour—Stephen had pulled the tarot deck from his pocket and set it on the counter.

Watching red fabric reach out to touch the black cards was like watching a dog try to play with a cat and Stephen grinned to himself as he rearranged the contents of the fridge to fit the chicken and fish better.

A flash bang of magic went off and he spun around, hands on his hips. “Hey!” he barked at the two relics.

The Cloak had frozen in mid air, looking as if it was about to poke the deck again.

“Play nice,” he told them.

Fabric snapped to attention and the magic in the cards swirled in apologetic pleasure before the two went back to subtly poking each other, careful not to cause another reaction.

Stephen sighed.

“Rough day?”

He looked up as Wong entered. “No,” Stephen was honest, “just ran into some interesting people.”

Wong tilted his head and dug through the bags, grabbing some of the plain yogurt to place in the fridge. “Accord interesting?”

“No,” Stephen shook his head, “nothing like that.” Food still in hand, he spun on the Cloak and cards. “Hey!” He called just as they were about to spark again. “Enough! Take it someplace else!”

They didn’t take it someplace else. But they did stop, focusing, instead, on Stephen.

“You would have been an excellent curator,” Wong said, watching the interaction. “The relics respect you.”

Stephen cleared his throat and avoided the other man’s gaze, placing what was left in the bags in their proper places. “I just...” he paused and frowned. Not quite sure what to say. He took care of them, sure, but it had seemed _right_. Each had a different personality. Maybe not quite on person level, but they weren’t pets.

Friends, he was tempted to say.

“I guess they’ve taken a liking to me,” Stephen admitted.

Wong made a light ‘hmm’ sound in the back of his throat. “So,” he said instead, “what are we eating?”

A laugh escaped Stephen and the honesty of it surprised him. “So that’s how it is,” he said, turning to pull a pan from the racks. “You only use me for my fridge.”

“Your kitchen is better stocked than Kamar-Taj,” the librarian admitted with a sly smile, rubbing his palms together. “Now, food?”

oOo

The tarot cards sparked and shimmered with the crisscrossing lines of history and the future. Shuffling them had become a habit—a way to use his hands and keep them busy while he focused on other things. He didn’t want to think about The Moon and what it meant. Whether it was for Nick Fury or for all of them. Magic sang under his fingertips, the cards catching the question in the edge of his thoughts and offering an answer.

 _Here_ , they seemed to call. _Look here._

He lifted the card on the top of the deck.

It was another of the swords, but this one had four dull, grey swords in the background, fading into the darkness, one that was broken in the middle, falling into the black, and another—still hot from the forge—cracking into pieces. The last sat in the middle, red hot from a fire, perfected by a hammer. Sparks flew off the metal, drifting upwards like the feathers of a phoenix.

Pain and anger, friendships reformed, and a rebirth from the old to the new. _Hardship will make you stronger,_ someone important probably said once upon time.

Stephen placed the card back down on the top of the deck.

oOo

Amazon had a hard time delivering when you didn’t have a credit card to your name.

Or a house that didn’t want to be found.

Which meant that Stephen had to go find a place in Greenwich that sold candles in bulk, and didn’t try to sell him something that smelled like ‘ _old cabin in the woods on a rainy evening_ ’ or something just as ridiculous.

Plain candles.

That’s all he wanted.

After his fourth candle store, Stephen took a turn and headed to 14th street. The spiritual stores there had to have _something_. They sold their crystals and their tarot cards—so there had to be one that would let him buy some hundred candles without them being marketed as Tony Stark’s sweat or spring rain or whatever holiday was fast approaching.

Pushing into the first of the stores he found, Stephen dodged around the stacks of books and ornamental bones to the candles. They sat on the shelves in various colours. Single long ones wrapped in plastic, smaller, fat ones that lasted forever.

And large, blank paperboard boxes that boasted seventy-five ten hour white candles for fifteen dollars apiece. Stephen grabbed two before anyone could try to tell him to buy one of the five dollar pillars.  

“Please, you have to know _someone_ who can help!”

Stephen looked up from a stack of incense to the desk in the back where a hassled looking teenager was glancing around, hands up as she tried to find someone else to talk to the distressed woman in front of her. “Look, okay,” the girl said, “I’m just a summer employee? I don’t actually believe in any of this Wiccan stuff?”

People had been inching away from the two or waiting, as if wondering when the train would crash.

“And, honestly,” the teenager continued, “it sounds like you need a _priest_.”

Stephen placed his boxes of candles on the counter. “Hi,” he said, cutting the conversation in half and easily dunking it into the garbage, “do you mind grabbing that pendant over there for me? I would but—” Lifting his hand, the sorcerer let the girl see the thin scars across his flesh.

She scrambled and Stephen turned to the woman wringing her hands and staring at her worn tennis shoes. “So,” he said, “why would you need a priest?”

oOo

Turns out, the lady—Jenny Miller who had just moved to New York from a small town in New Mexico—had a new house that liked to bleed from the walls.

“No,” Stephen said, lifting his foot up and watching red liquid drip from the tip of his shoes back onto the carpet, “that’s _definitely_ not normal.” Good news; it wasn’t blood. Bad news, it meant that there was something that had claimed the house its own.

Handing her his boxes of candles, the Master of New York stood in the middle of Ms. Miller’s living room and raised his hands.

The first slide and twist took him beyond the physical realm so he could look beyond.

Something crawled along the walls, just outside his vision, clicking and snarling. Stephen didn’t know the name of it, though with the amount of bulbous eyes and its arachnid appearance, he decided to look it up when he got back to the Sanctum.

Just so he could avoid where ever the hell it had come from.

“This place is not yours,” Stephen said, keeping his voice as non-threatening as he could. “I know it’s a nice house, but you can’t have it—”

The creature sprung, Stephen scrambling out of the way just in time. Air hissed between his hands, solidifying before he managed to regain his balance. It was nothing more than a simple blade—sharp and long—so when the creature charged with a spitting hiss, the sorcerer raised his weapon and watched with disgust and horror as it impaled itself.

“Gross,” he grumbled, wiping the black goo of the giant bug’s insides on his shirt and vanishing the sword. A simple cleaning spell burned the body and removed the red-whatever.

Stephen took his candles back from Jenny Miller. “You should be all set, now,” he told her, “but, just in case.”

Nodding, Stephen summoned his card in a burst of flame. It was nothing more than a black piece of paper with red cursive that had his phone number on one side and his address on the other. “Call me if you have any other problems.”

Ms. Miller took it out of the air as if she was afraid it would bite her. When there were no side effects, she offered a wide, winning smile to the sorcerer. “Thank you,” she breathed, “I just—how can I repay you?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Stephen said, already hearing Wong’s disappointed groan in the back of his mind. “Just... make sure to keep an eye out? The world’s been an odd place, lately.”

She nodded frantically, following him to her front door. “Of course, thank you mister...” Her voice trailed off. “Sorry, I seem to have completely forgotten your name.”

The sorcerer smiled. “It’s Doctor,” he told her. “Doctor Stephen Strange.”

**Author's Note:**

> notes:  
> -the sanctum does, indeed, have a room that leads directly to the bottom of the ocean  
> -Hammer the Velociraptor shark is based on a true story. i have never forgiven my brother  
> -most of what i know from strange's og apartment was what i found in concept art where it looks like he has a class case filled with model ships  
> -the cloak of levitation has a habit of changing itself into various articles of clothing whenever it pleases in the comics. recently, it's taken up form as a scarf  
> -the tarot cards are based on TrueBlack, a deck by Arthur Wang. [the chariot](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317234336694796288/456813625391185921/8adbaa99082666e4ab41335b98cb9a97_original.png), [the ten of swords](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317234336694796288/456889519107473409/965a6b29de483516571efd533aed243a_original.png), [the four of swords](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317234336694796288/456890469054676992/d88001d2e9f12e09f35cdeb80303f097_original.png), [the moon](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317234336694796288/456892397003997196/dc28d84cb226cd9540f9a2e9b4294fb8_original.png), and [the eight of swords](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317234336694796288/457032323930652683/6cf613eef83a3fd1a63d8906d87a50e8_original.png).  
> -Stephen's "“My name is Stephen Strange. I live at 177A Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. I'm a Doctor" is a shout out to Doctor Strange #11. that issue the home of another beautiful quite that inspired a lot of the second part of this fic. it goes: "I don't know how people find me, but they always do. They all turn up on my doorstep. All lost and confused and utterly terrified. They've only had a glimpse of the unseen things that live in the shadows. And it's driven them to the brink of madness. So when they find me, all I do is take their hand... and tell them not to blink."


End file.
